Ever seen a lady asked to take notes in a meeting in presence of her subordinates, or been cut in between a presentation or while putting her views forward? Is this normal? How many times have we come across these situations? Probably a lot of times, but we feel it’s normal and may not have paid any attention to this. This is not normal; rather, it is an example of workplace incivility.
There are many places where knowingly or unknowingly, we make people feel unwelcomed, either by simply cutting in between their talk, or by making them feel that we are not interested in listening to them, or by projecting microaggression towards them. In all these scenarios, we are projecting negative behaviour toward them. We may wonder how these minor incidents can be regarded as a part of “workplace incivility”.
Yes, these all are part of constructs that come under organisational negativity. In organisational behaviour literature, organisational negativity is no more limited to bullying, harassment, aggression, and abusive supervision. A new construct called workplace incivility has recently been added under organisational negativity.
Workplace Incivility can be defined as a low-intensity deviant behaviour with an ambiguous intent to harm a target. People often categorise organisational bullying and harassment as workplace incivility, but it’s not correct. No doubt, workplace incivility is associated with bullying and harassment, but they are not a part of it; rather it is the underlying cause leading to bullying, harassment, abusive supervision, etc.
I conducted a survey on LinkedIn in which I found that 58 per cent of the respondents have experienced workplace incivility sometimes in their life, and 60 per cent of the respondents have seen their co-workers or friends experiencing it. According to a study conducted by Porath & Pearson in the year 2013, it was estimated that 98 per cent of employees had experienced workplace incivility, and 50 per cent of them have faced it on a weekly basis.
Workplace incivility leads the targeted employees to have less engagement in organisational citizenship behaviour and have higher turnover intention due to going through excess stress compared to other co-workers. It’s high time that organisations need to inculcate civility practices and should regularly monitor it.